


You Can't Fake Gravity

by Mithen



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Enemies to not-as-much-Enemies, Gen, Handcuffed Together, Humor, Kayfabe Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 22:45:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7456777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn find themselves handcuffed together (it's Sami's fault, mostly) and forced to wrestle as a tag team that way for a week.  Thank goodness that draft is coming up soon and they'll almost certainly be on separate rosters and not have to deal with each other anymore.  Yep.  Thank goodness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Fake Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously set just before the draft, but with a slightly different canonical set of matches and such.

“I’m not going to let you interfere in this match.”

Standing in the corridor, facing down Sami Zayn like a gunslinger, Kevin Owens shook his head. “Sami, Sami, Sami,” he tutted, then looked annoyed as he had to raise his voice to be heard over the sirens of Cesaro’s entrance. “You’re delusional, you know.”

“Look,” said Sami. “I haven’t been a very good friend to Cesaro recently--”

“You really haven’t,” Kevin agreed, mockingly doleful. “You’re just not very reliable. That must make him so sad to find out, Sami.”

Sami swallowed hard as the barb sank home, maybe even more than Kevin had realized it would. “It’s true,” he forced himself to say. “I’ve been a shitty friend.” 

A flicker of authentic surprise went across Kevin’s face.

“But that’s _your_ fault,” Sami went on, feeling his lips thin in righteous rage. “Soon we’ll be on different rosters and I can re-focus, but until then--”

“--Wait,” said Kevin. “Why are you so sure we’ll be on different rosters?”

Sami blinked at him. “No one in their right mind would keep us on the same roster, Kev. The money saved in property damage alone would make it worth it.”

“Oh.” Kevin’s eyes flicked upward as he processed this, and he looked thoughtful. “You’ve got a point there.” Then he looked back at Sami and grinned. “And I might not be on the same roster as Cesaro much longer, so I’d better take advantage--”

Sami grabbed his arm as Kevin tried to brush past him. “I said _no,_ ” he snapped.

“And how are you going to stop--” There was a _click_ , and Kevin blinked down at the silver cuff around his right wrist, then blinked again as Sami snapped the other cuff on his own left wrist. “Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me,” he said.

“I’m not letting you mess with Cesaro,” Sami said. 

“Give me the key,” said Kevin, grabbing his shoulder.

“Fuck off,” Sami said, pushing him without thinking and sending both of them careening into a wall. 

An undignified tussle followed, in which the two of them basically tumbled out a fire door and into an alley, sending roadies on their cigarette break scattering. “Ah ha!” Kevin crowed, holding up the key. “You _would_ just put it in your windbreaker pocket, you--hey!”

Sami slapped at his hand and the key went flying in a beautiful, doomed, silvery arc.

They both stared as the key landed on a sewer grate, bounced once in the air with a plaintive _ting,_ and then fell straight down the grate into the darkness below.

“Oh _shit,_ ” Kevin and Sami said in unison.

* * *

Sami knew they were in trouble the moment Stephanie McMahon covered her mouth with her hand and her shoulders started shaking. Shane didn’t look notably more sympathetic.

“Come on, Steph,” said Kevin, “I know you’ve got locksmiths and stuff, could you please get someone to cut us loose?”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Shane?” said Steph.

There was a wicked light in Shane’s eye that Sami didn’t like at all. “I might be.”

“I’m thinking maybe these two should have to deal with the consequences of their actions.”

“ _My_ actions?” Kevin yanked his hand over; Sami gritted his teeth and yanked back. “ _He’s_ the doofus who cuffed us together!”

“I think Steph means more than Sami’s immediate actions,” said Shane. “I think she means both of your actions for the last couple of years.”

“Shane, please don’t do this,” pleaded Sami.

“Don’t you dare do this!” yelled Kevin. “I’m your biggest star, I can’t wrestle shackled to dead weight like this!”

“Actually,” said Steph, “I do believe you can.”

“I see where you’re going,” said Shane. “Sami, Kevin--you’re going to stay cuffed together until the end of next week’s Raw, and you’ll be wrestling in house shows until then as a tag team.”

“What a great idea,” said Steph as Kevin made an inarticulate horrified noise. “We’ll make them tornado tag team matches, all four competitors can be in the ring at the same time--fantastic.”

“No,” said Sami, too appalled to say anything further.

Steph arched her brows at him. “I thought you liked your job here on the main roster?” she said pointedly, and Sami felt himself blanch a bit. “But I’ll tell you what,” she said. “To give you some incentive to get along--if you win your match on Raw, I’ll give Sami a shot at the Intercontinental title and Kevin a shot at U.S. title.”

Sami saw Kevin’s eyes light up at the idea of getting the U.S. title--the one he’d gunned for and failed to win when he arrived at the main roster. For his part, Sami had been hoping for another shot at the IC. He wanted that one particularly, for lots of reasons, only some of which were that it was the first title Kevin had won.

“Sure,” he said. “I will literally carry Kevin through the match if I have to.”

“I spent six years shackled to you, what’s one more week?” said Kevin. “I accept.”

“Well then,” said Steph, beaming at them. “We’ll see you in Bridgeport for your first match!”

She and Shane walked off in different directions. Kevin looked at Sami. Sami looked at Kevin. 

“How are we going to get from Michigan to Connecticut in three days?” Sami said.

* * *

“Stop invading my space.”

“I’m not invading your space.”

“Your hand is.”

“I don’t have much _choice._ ”

A brief silence.

“Stop it.”

“No, _you_ stop it.”

_“Am I gonna have to turn this car around?”_ bellowed Colin Cassady from the driver’s seat, and Sami and Kevin fell silent.

“Geez,” said Enzo, turning around to glare at them. “Me and Cass gave up our days off to drive you guys halfway across the country, the least you could do is keep your traps shut.”

“I’d have been glad to fly, but we’d never get through security like _this,_ ” Kevin said with a vicious yank on the cuffs.

“He means thank you,” said Sami to Enzo and Cass. “That was very considerate of you.”

Enzo raised his eyebrows. “It was,” he said. “But I’m regrettin’ it a bit now.”

“So grow up and behave yourselves,” Cass said sternly, and Sami would have been impressed at how much presence he’d come to have on the main roster if it hadn’t been so _annoying_ to be lectured. He glared at Kevin, but Kevin had turned his head and was staring out at the scenery slipping by.

“Coupla big babies,” muttered Cass, and after that quiet fell in the backseat. Enzo was more than happy to pick up the slack, and so Sami, Kevin, and Cass got a complex monologue about sneakers. At least, Sami thought it was about sneakers--he didn’t understand half of it. He tugged very slightly on the cuff, and Kevin tugged back, but with no real energy in it. Looking out of the corner of his eye, Sami watched his reflection in the window. His eyes were cast down, with that very slight pout to the lower lip that meant he was legitimately feeling low.

Sami hated that he could tell Kevin was truly depressed and not just playing it up. He hated that he knew Kevin that well.

He could not wait for the draft.

* * *

The tile of the bathroom floor was cold. Sami sat, listening to the water running, feeling the shower pelting down on his hand beyond the curtain. “Hurry _up_ ,” he snarled.

“Let me fucking enjoy the luxury of at least not having to look at you,” Kevin’s voice came from the shower. “Except for this random annoying _hand._ ” He shook the handcuff and Sami’s arm was jolted around.

“I should just Helluva Kick you into the toilet,” said Sami.

“I’d like to see you try,” said Kevin. He sounded tired.

There was a long pause. 

“I’m sorry you can’t go home for your days off,” Sami finally said, keeping his voice almost low enough that Kevin wouldn’t be able to hear it over the sound of the shower. Maybe Kevin wouldn’t catch it.

He heard Kevin sigh. Then: “Don’t apologize. It’ll just piss me off more.”

The shower turned off and the curtain was slammed open; still wearing the t-shirt he couldn’t currently remove, Kevin climbed out and grabbed the towel with his free hand.

“I’m calling my family,” he announced.

* * *

Sami sat on the bed next to Kevin, keeping himself carefully out of range of the video as Kevin made gurgling noises at his daughter. At first he looked around the hotel room, but the charms of beige walls paled pretty quickly. Kevin was the only thing left in the room to look at, really.

He wondered if Kevin knew how young he looked when he stopped scowling and talked to his kids.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it home too, kiddo,” Kevin was saying to his son now. “But I’ll be back next week. Did you have a good week in school?” He nodded and made encouraging noises as Owen talked about math problems.

“I gotta go, Dad,” said Owen’s sleepy voice after a while.

“Okay,” said Kevin, sounding disappointed.

“I love you, Dad.”

“I love you too, slugger.”

“Tell Uncle Sami I love him.”

“Will do,” Kevin said hastily as Sami blurted out “Wait, _what?”_

There was a beat of silence, and then Owen’s excited voice burst from the phone: “Is Uncle Sami there?”

Below sight of the camera, Kevin tugged slightly on the cuff in a sort of invitation, and Sami stuck his head into the frame. “Uh,” he said. “Hi. Long time no see.”

Owen beamed at him. “I see you all the time,” he said. “I watch you guys every week.”

“Oh,” said Sami, managing a smile. 

“It’s okay,” said Owen, and to Sami’s astonishment, winked at him. “Dad told me everything. Don’t worry, I haven’t told _anyone._ ”

They shared a few more cheerful words and signed off, leaving Sami looking at Kevin, who was suddenly very busy tracing the designs on the bedspread with his free hand. “What the hell was that?” Sami said.

“He...never watched any of my Ring of Honor stuff,” Kevin said.

Sami waited.

“He watched my NXT debut.” A long pause. “We talked after. I…” Kevin swallowed and then said in a rush, “I told him it was all fake.”

Sami blinked at him. “Fake,” he said. 

“Yeah. Fake. Not real.” Kevin looked at Sami’s face and winced. “I told him we were working together, that it wasn’t a real fight.”

“You--” Sami scrambled to his knees on the bed, facing Kevin. “You _what?_ ”

“He thinks we’re still friends. That we’re putting a show together where we pretend to hate each other and pretend to fight each other.” 

Sami pulled at his hair with his free hand, staring at him. “Are you-- That’s--” His voice sputtered to a halt. “That’s...actually pretty clever,” he said reluctantly.

“I thought so,” said Kevin, looking pleased.

“A pretty clever way to _totally avoid taking responsibility for your actions!_ I can’t believe this! You’re just cheerfully lying to him, letting him think everything is fine while you beat the hell out of his ‘Uncle Sami,’ you complete piece of--”

“--He was crying,” Kevin said, and his voice was flat and full of pain. “He was crying and I couldn’t stand it.” He swallowed, then sniffed hard. “There’s nothing cheerful about it,” he added in a mutter under his breath, more to himself than Sami.

Sami stared at him, his head a crazy welter of thoughts, unsure which one to express. Then he heard himself say something he hadn’t even realized he was thinking. “You were never shackled to me.”

Kevin’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Talking to the McMahons. You said you were shackled to me for years. You weren’t _shackled to me,_ ” Sami said, raising his cuffed hand and shaking it. “We were partners! We were fucking _friends,_ Kevin!”

Kevin looked away, studying the texture of the beige wall intently. “We should get some sleep,” he said. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us tomorrow.”

“Don’t roll over,” Sami said, feeling almost relieved that he’d let it drop. “You always sleep on your side. I don’t want you dragging me around with you.” He reached out and switched off the light, ignoring Kevin’s mumbled “I don’t want you dragging me around, either.”

It was...weird, being in the same room as Kevin again while he slept. Even his breaths sounded familiar.

Eventually Sami got to sleep.

* * *

“Hey! Get up!” There was a pounding on the door; Enzo Amore’s voice snapped Kevin Owens out of a restless sleep and he sat up, feeling disoriented. Where was he? What was going on? He started to slide out of bed and came up short as he felt his wrist catch, looking over to see--

_Oh shit, that’s right,_ he thought as he saw Sami’s eyes squint blearily at him in confusion. “Wha?” Sami muttered. Then his eyes snapped open. _“Wha?”_

Sami was always a little disoriented in the morning, and Kevin supposed this was a more disorienting morning than most. “Get moving,” he snapped, standing up and dragging Sami out of the bed. “Enzo and Cass are waiting for us.”

Sami slithered limply to the floor and for a second Kevin was afraid he’d simply refuse to move. Then he got to his feet, blinking and trying to rub at his eyes, stopping as he hauled Kevin’s hand closer to his face. “Right,” he said. “Match tonight. Bridgeton. Tornado tags. Also, I hate you.”

“Feeling’s mutual, dork,” said Kevin. “Now let’s get a move on.”

* * *

“We need to plan strategy,” Sami said around a yawn an hour later as Pennsylvania slipped by. “Tornado tags are funky. We’ll have to find a way to make it work.”

“Here’s a strategy: you stay out of my way and I’ll beat our opponents.”

Sami almost smiled. “Hard to stay out of your way like this,” he said, hoisting his hand up, and Kevin’s along with it.

“Give it your best shot,” snapped Kevin.

“Look, seriously, we need to come up with--”

“--We don’t need to come up with anything,” Kevin said. “We don’t need to _plan_ , or _strategize_ , or do any of those things. We’re not working together, you get it?” He saw Enzo and Cass trade raised eyebrows and he scowled at them in the mirror. “We’ll do fine.”

“Whatever,” Sami said sullenly, falling silent.

“So,” said Enzo, “Cracker Barrel or Chili’s for lunch?”

“Gotta be take-out,” Cass pointed out. “Hard to explain the handcuffed dudes.”

“Oh,” said Enzo. “Good point.” The two of them launched into a spirited discussion of the available eating options along the way, and Kevin pulled out his phone. It was hard to tweet one-handed--especially left-handed--but he was making some progress when suddenly there was a soft _thump_ on his shoulder as Sami slumped over, asleep.

“Good grief,” Kevin muttered, shoving him away so his head came up against the window. 

“--can’t do that tornado DDT,” Sami said through a yawn as he came awake, as if he’d been dreaming about planning the match with Kevin. “The pop up powerbomb might be possible, though. Gotta figure out…figure out…”

“Give it a rest,” Kevin said. “We’ll be fine.”

* * *

They were not fine.

Kevin hadn’t realized just _how much_ hilarity their situation was going to cause people; it seemed everyone had to come by and ask them to tell the story of how they’d ended up handcuffed together. After the fourth retelling, Kevin decided to embellish it a bit, adding a few extra details, like Sami falling into a trash can as they’d struggled in the alley. Sami looked at him oddly but didn’t contradict him, and when Cesaro showed up to ask what had happened Sami started adding some extra details of his own: a startled cat, a banana peel on Kevin’s head, some rather more colorful insults than Kevin had actually said (but he kind of wished he had). It was fun, in a strange way, to see who could push the story farthest. By the time the show started, their brawl in the alley had moved from something sordid and frankly embarrassing to an epic battle between two titanic forces.

“You liar,” Kevin said to Sami as Paige walked away giggling over their latest re-enactment of the battle, which had included a decent impression of a screeching cat.

“It’s not _lying,_ ” Sami said. “It’s telling a good story. The basic facts are true.”

Kevin snorted. “Just like the basic facts of our lives are true, but you go and add all that stuff that makes it sound like you were _lonely_ after I got married, that you felt like I’d _abandoned you_ or some such thing. Just so you can have a better story or something.”

Sami opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Yeah,” he finally said. “It’s just like that.” He shook his head. “We gotta get to Gorilla,” he said. “Our match is soon.”

They were up against the Vaudevillains, and it was an unmitigated disaster. Kevin immediately tried to go for a cannonball on Simon Gotch, but Sami didn’t move fast enough and he came up short, turning it into a weak left-handed punch at the last second.

“Keep up with me!” Kevin yelled at Sami. “I can’t do my moves if you don’t keep up with me!”

“Stop acting like you’re in this on your own!” Sami yelled back, shoving at him.

Kevin used the handcuffs to yank Sami toward him and try to punch him, but Sami ducked and kicked his knee, sending him plunging to the mat. Kevin howled something inarticulate, grabbing at his tormentor, unable to think of anything but the need to pummel him into the floor, to obliterate him, to finally, _finally_ be free of him in some way. He punched wildly at Sami, but his right hand was shackled and Sami’s right was free, and Sami got in a good punch on his eye and Kevin howled again, dragging him down onto the mat, the two of them rolling over and over until--

Until Gotch and English pried them apart, and Gotch held Kevin down so he couldn’t interfere while Aiden pinned a stunned and snarling Sami Zayn--still trying to kick Kevin--for the three-count.

The crowd booed heartily, and Kevin was pretty sure it was as much for the two of them as for the Vaudevillains.

* * *

“Dad! Your eye!” 

Owen’s voice sounded concerned; Kevin clapped the ice back onto his blackening eye and smiled reassuringly. 

“It happens, kiddo,” he said. “If you want it to look real, you risk getting a little hurt. Like I always say, you can fake the fighting...”

“... _but you can’t fake gravity,”_ Owen chimed in with him. There was a pause. “So...did Uncle Sami do that to you?”

Kevin heard the soft _clink_ of the handcuffs as Sami shifted on the bed next to him, out of camera range, and resisted the urge to look at him. He hadn’t planned to talk to Owen again before next week’s Raw, but the phone had rung and he’d answered without thinking. “He did, yeah,” Kevin said. “We’ve talked about this. It always looks like Sami and I are hitting each other the hardest because you can do that with the people you really trust, right?” Shit, was the word he’d come up with for that? Working sharp? No… Right! “Working stiff, remember? You can work stiff with your _real_ friends.”

He could feel Sami’s glare pressing against him, but he refused to look. _Go ahead,_ he dared Sami in his mind. _Fuck everything up. Tell Owen how much we really hate each other and make him cry, then tell me I deserve to have my son despise me, you self-righteous little…_

But Sami didn’t say anything. Not then, and not as the topic shifted to Owen’s science project and his new bike. He kept silent even when the conversation ended as it always did, with Owen saying “Tell Uncle Sami I love him,” and Kevin saying “Will do, kiddo.”

He didn’t say anything at all.

Kevin cleared his throat. “I saw a movie once where two guys were handcuffed together and they got out of it by climbing onto a railroad bridge and then dangling off the bridge with the chain on the tracks so the train cut the cuffs and they fell into the river,” he said into the silence. “Maybe we could tell Steph it was an accident and she’ll still give us those title shots…”

“This isn’t a _movie_ ,” Sami said. “Even putting aside the fact we might get ourselves killed, we’d risk the people in the train too. So that’s out. Besides, Steph would never believe us. And I want that shot at the IC title.”

Kevin picked at the coverlet with his free hand. “You’ll get a title shot soon enough, you know. Maybe we should just… get ourselves cut out of these and give up on the idea.”

Sami glowered and started to cross his arms, then stopped as the motion threatened to drag Kevin closer to him. His jaw was set in that way that meant there was no shaking him. Kevin hated that he knew that. “We’re going to win on Raw on Monday. Somehow.” There was a pause. “What do you mean, I’ll get a title shot soon enough?”

Kevin shrugged uncomfortably. “They can’t ignore how talented you are forever.”

Sami opened his mouth, then closed it. He repeated the motion a couple of times, looking rather like a particularly dim-witted goldfish. Then he shook his head and punched the pillow with his free hand before lying down and closing his eyes.

Kevin dreamed that night that he and Sami were hanging from train tracks, still tied together. The train whistled and clattered overhead, and there was a jolt as the chain was cut, and then they were falling, falling free.

In the dream he grabbed Sami’s hand and tried to punch him as they fell, not letting go. They fell forever into silence.

* * *

“We gotta figure out how to do this,” Sami said in the locker room in the Bangor auditorium. “The Usos would be hard to beat at the best of times, but like this?” He held up his hand and Kevin’s along with it. “Kev, we gotta plan.”

“What does it matter?” Kevin was glaring down at the floor. “We’re going to lose.”

“Damn it, Kev!” Sami stood up, dragging Kevin up with him, hauling him closer. “We were the _best tag team in the world_ for years. We conquered every obstacle anyone threw at us, we didn’t let all the stupid shit in the world slow us down, we figured out how to beat every dumb handicap in the world, now we just gotta figure out how to beat this one. It’s just for two more matches. Then we’ll be free of each other, we can get through the draft and go our separate ways-- _just two more matches, Kev._ Two more matches where we prove we’re still better than any of them, even when you hate me. We can work with this, we can do it. Because we’re two of the best fucking wrestlers in the world.” He stopped to take a breath. Inspirational speeches had never really been his thing. Kevin was looking at him as if he were faintly puzzled.

“Even when we hate each other,” Kevin said as if he were correcting something Sami had said.

“Right, that’s what I said.”

Kevin face scrunched up thoughtfully. “Okay,” he said doubtfully. He looked down at their linked hands. “What of our movesets can we do like this? Can we innovate something?”

“Can we-- Of course we can. That’s a stupid question, Kev.”

Kevin was still looking down at their hands, but Sami saw a smile twitch at the corners of his mouth. “ _You’re_ stupid,” Kevin said absent-mindedly, as if repeating a line he knew by heart.

* * *

The match with the Usos went--better. At least it didn’t end with Kevin and Sami trying to pummel each other. And there was that moment near the end…

Jimmy Uso had been coming at them with his arms outstretched, aiming to clothesline them both. In unison, Kevin and Sami had ducked--then, without any forethought at all, both had lunged forward and caught Jimmy in the chest with their chained hands.

Jimmy had gone down in a heap, and Sami and Kevin had stared at each other with appalled exhilaration (the proportions of “appalled” to “exhilarated” quite different for Sami then for Kevin). With a bark of delight, Kevin swung around to meet the charging Jey, yanking Sami like a whip to intercept him.

Sami yelped in alarm when he realized the chain was level with Jey’s throat, ducking down so it hit his chest instead and knocked him down beside his brother. 

“What are you doing?” yelled Kevin.

“Trying not to _kill_ them!” Sami yelled back, jumping to make the pin but slowed by Kevin’s inertia.

“They shouldn’t fuck with us, then,” Kevin snarled as Jey kicked out.

Sami was going to argue with him, but Jimmy was back on his feet too and there was no time. And besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. There was a part of him, a part that he didn’t like to look at too closely, that didn’t exactly disagree. They hadn’t gotten where they were by letting people fuck with them, and he wasn’t going to let the Usos be the first. Sami just wanted it with a minimum of bloodshed and pain as opposed to Kevin’s maximum.

As it turned out, most of the pain ended up on their side.

* * *

“I hate superkicks,” Kevin said, feeling his jaw gingerly.

“At least this time it was a lot more equal,” Sami said, resting the side of his face against the soothing ice. 

“Next time is Raw,” Kevin said. “Against Gallows and Anderson. And we haven’t managed to win once.”

“We’ll win on Raw,” Sami said with a confidence he didn’t really feel. Kevin gave him a look that said _I know how your voice sounds when you’re pretending to be more confident than you really feel,_ but he didn’t say anything. “Go on and call your family,” Sami said.

Kevin blinked. “Are you sure?”

“I’m not going to rat on you,” Sami said in disgust. “I don’t want to upset Owen either, you know.”

“Oh,” said Kevin.

“But he’s going to find out someday,” Sami said.

“If we’re on different rosters, it’ll be easier,” Kevin said.

“Kev,” said Sami. “He’s going to find out someday.”

Kevin looked away from him and sniffed hard, once. “I guess.”

Sami sighed. “But it won’t be today. Just call him.” He checked Twitter and kept quiet and out of the frame while Kevin talked with his family, describing the Maine woods they’d driven through, sharing some anecdotes: Enzo and Cass’s reaction to seeing a moose, stopping at some ice cream stand in the middle of nowhere. “Yeah, I got jimmies, just like you like,” Kevin said, laughing. He didn’t mention that he and Sami had had to wait in the car while Cass ordered and brought them the ice cream, nor that a fair amount of it had ended up in Sami’s hair after they’d argued.

“G’night, Dad,” Owen eventually said through a yawn. “And tell Uncle Sami I love him.”

“Will do, kiddo,” murmured Kevin, and Sami looked away from whatever he saw flickering behind Kevin’s eyes at that moment. How many bare hotel rooms had those words been said in over the last year? How many times had Kevin listened to his son send love along, knowing no one would hear it?

“Look,” Sami said as the call hung up. “This is possibly one of the last times we’ll be in the ring together for a long time, I’d rather it not end in humiliating defeat for us both.”

“Not both of us, but just me would be fine, huh?” Kevin’s smile was sardonic.

Sami’s smile back at him was equally wry. “Usually when we’re in the ring together that’s what I’ve got to hope for. But not this time.”

“Huh,” said Kevin. “Not this time,” he echoed. He nodded. “Let’s plan.”

* * *

“Sami. Get up. _Sami._ ”

Sami mumbled something and waved a hand in Kevin’s direction, then tried to roll away from him, failing due to the handcuffs.

“Sami, come _on._ ” The morning sunlight was streaming into the hotel room and Enzo and Cass would be here soon. They’d been up until an ungodly hour planning, and no one had gotten punched, not even once. Kevin wasn’t sure if that was a success or a disappointment. “Wake _up!_ ”

Kevin shook Sami’s shoulder, and Sami flailed at him sleepily, jolting him around. Then he seemed to realize abruptly that his wrist was trapped and his flailing turned more frantic. He tried to lurch away from Kevin--and slipped off the bed into the gap between the bed and the wall, vanishing from sight. Of course, the sudden drop dragged Kevin along with him, and Kevin found himself draped across the bed on his stomach, his hand disappearing after Sami.

There was a short silence, and then Sami’s handcuffed left hand rose from the gap, fingers splayed. “I just,” Sami’s voice drifted up mournfully, “I just...want your wrist and my wrist to not be together.”

Kevin bit his lip hard, but it was no good; he started laughing, putting his head down on his arm and just giving in, cracking up at all the ridiculousness of their lives. 

“Ah,” he said finally, sighing. “I hate you so much.”

“I hate you too,” Sami said with a terrible gentleness, and Kevin was in that moment very glad Sami couldn’t see his face.

* * *

Raw. Two title shots on the line. The Club standing between them and their goal.

Gallows and Anderson were standing in the ring laughing as Sami and Kevin came down the ramp, yanking back and forth between the handcuffs and quarreling over whose music should be playing (“The audience gets behind mine!” “Mine’s better for ass-kicking!”). The Club kept laughing right up until the bell rang.

At which point Sami and Kevin stopped bickering and started to cut through them like a scythe, and they realized they’d been sandbagged.

It was a close match--Gallows and Anderson were a great team, not to be taken lightly. But when Kevin and Sami were on the same page, nothing could stop them. They weren’t even really on the same page tonight, but they were close enough that it would take more than the Club to stop them. There was a moment when Kevin assisted Sami’s dropkick by adding torque to it through the cuffs that caused the audience to gasp in unison; another when Kevin tossed Anderson into the pop-up powerbomb and Sami stepped in and turned it into a Blue Thunderbomb. And at the end--at the end--

In the end Karl Anderson was left reeling in the corner, and as he struggled to his feet Kevin and Sami came forward together, perfectly timed, to do a Helluva Kick and a cannonball at exactly the same time. Nobody else could have pulled that off, Sami thought as the crowd came to their feet like one living thing. Nobody but them.

Kevin pinned Anderson, one hand held high in the air so Sami could stand and guard the pin from a furious Gallows. It made him look like he was celebrating already, and when the ref’s fist came down for the third time Kevin came to his feet with a whoop. “That U.S. title will be _mine_ , baby!” he yelled at the crowd. Then he grabbed at Sami’s face, lifting his chin as if displaying him to the audience: “And this here is the next IC champ! You just wait!”

He beamed at Sami, and then his smile faltered. “Hey,” he said with some surprise. “We did it.”

“We sure did,” said Sami. “If this is our last time in the ring together, it was a good one.”

“Our last time together,” Kevin repeated, staring at him. “Yeah.”

* * *

“Dad!” Owen’s voice carried over the sound of the locksmith working on the handcuffs. “I saw and I had to call! You guys were great! Is Uncle Sami there?”

“You bet, champ,” said Sami, leaning into the camera and waving.

“Tell the Club they did great too, would you?” said Owen. “Gallows looked so mad--he’s really good at that,” he added, laughing.

“Uh, yeah,” said Sami. “Sure thing.” 

“Do you think you and Dad will end up different shows after the draft?” Owen sounded worried.

“It seems pretty likely,” Sami said.

“But you work together so well,” Owen said with a sniffle.

“It’s not our choice,” Kevin said from beside Sami. “Remember, kiddo? I told you, we don’t get to choose.”

Owen sniffed hard again, sounding uncannily for a moment like his father. “Uncle Sami, you’re bleeding,” he pointed out, and Sami tongued the bit of blood at the corner of his mouth.

“Nothing major,” he said with a smile. “It happens. Like your father says…”

“...you can’t fake gravity,” Owen finished with a giggle.

There was a _clink,_ and Sami felt the cuff on his wrist give way. He looked down at his bare wrist and flexed the fingers. Kevin was looking at him, his face the utterly bland mask that Kevin put on when he was feeling something he didn’t want anyone to see. Usually Sami could tell what it was anyway. He couldn’t this time.

“You can’t fake gravity,” Sami repeated softly.

He slept that night in a blessedly quiet room alone, able to move any way he liked. Free.

He dreamed that he and Kevin were fighting on top of a scaffold and it gave way with a clang of metal that went on and on and on. In the dream, he grabbed Kevin’s wrist, wrapping his arms around him as they fell. To attack or to protect? He couldn’t tell.

He still didn’t know when he woke up.

* * *

Smackdown--the last Smackdown before the draft. Kevin Owens finished a hard-fought match against Ziggler, just barely managing to win--and Gallows and Anderson, clearly still smarting from their defeat on Raw, charged down the ramp to start beating him up. Owens crumpled under a hail of blows, his hands up to shield his face.

So he didn’t see the moment when Sami Zayn came running down the ramp and into the ring to slam into Luke Gallows and send him careening from the ring, but he heard the crowd roar, that roar of delight that it only did for Sami.

Kevin came to his feet and went back to back with Sami without thinking, fists up, ready to take on all comers. Gallows and Anderson closed on them, but Sami was fresh and angry and Kevin was wobbly but desperate--within minutes they’d been sent packing back up the ramp as the crowd shrieked its approval.

Then the crowd went silent again as they swung around and confronted each other, glaring, fists raised.

There was a long, terrible moment as they looked at each other. Then Sami moved away from him--slowly, cautiously. He got out of the ring and backed up the ramp, still with his eyes on Kevin.

At the top of the ramp he stopped, looking at Kevin standing in the ring. He made a hopeless, truncated gesture, as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands. “Are you...are you just going to let me walk away?” he yelled at Kevin. “Are you just going to let me _go_?” The words were confrontational, but his voice was strangely devoid of anger. Almost forlorn.

Kevin lurched forward on wobbly legs and grabbed the ring ropes so tightly his knuckles went white, leaning on them, staring at Sami. “It’s not our _choice!”_ he yelled back.

Sami took a step back toward the ring, almost involuntarily, and Kevin leaned harder on the ropes toward him. Then Sami stopped and stepped back, shaking his head. He turned to walk away.

“It doesn’t _matter!”_ Kevin screamed, and Sami stopped: not looking back, but not moving. “It doesn’t matter where we end up and you know it! We’ll always be dragged back together somehow. We’ll never be free of each other!” 

His voice cracked on “never” as if it were a promise instead of a threat.

Sami looked away and the camera caught him swallowing hard, once. Then he nodded very slightly and walked away, leaving Kevin alone in the ring.

* * *

That night, Sami was in a taxi on the way to the airport, drowsing and propping his head up with his hand, when his phone buzzed. He pulled it out, yawning, and glanced at it, then blinked hard and rubbed his eyes. Despite his disbelief, the number stayed the same: a familiar one that he should have deleted and never had.

_Owen sends his love,_ the message said.

Sami looked at it for a while. _Tell him ‘Back atcha, champ.’_ he sent back. _And remind him you can’t fake gravity._

You can’t, either, he thought as the city lights slid by. Gravity doesn’t care if you love or hate. It just… _pulls._

His phone buzzed.

_Ain’t that the fucking truth,_ the message read.


End file.
